Line illustration made up of dense black-and-white lines, depicting a person in the foreground looking toward a silhouetted figure in the background. Illustration by Anne LeGuern.
Original illustration by Anne LeGuern

Perhaps Robert Blake, c. 1779-80

The boy’s hand rests
upon an unknown object.
One imagines the solid
back of a chair, omitted.
A slight bend at the knee —
coquettish and troubled
he stands with his face
turned down like he isn’t
there at all. Like he’s taken
himself out of the image
entirely. The quiet boy
stands very still. A few years
from now he’ll become
a statue that doesn’t
wake-up. When I tell him
to speak all he can say
is the world one wants
isn’t the world
one gets. When I tell him
to stop, he doesn’t stop.
He keeps going,
never bringing his face
up to meet mine.
The world, the want.
The world, the want.
And how, of course,
I don’t deserve it.

Line illustration depicting two people grasping for each other, hands touching. Illustration by Anne LeGuern.

Robert’s Dream

Two men erect by the shine of gold paint, a silver dagger
enshrined against the what is it that dreads the cocktail hour.
Misconstrued meanings; drudge of illumination
before the swallow-night. I need you, coming in from the other room.
In the dream we were boys enforested, capes slung, subdued-
shouldered, cocked glances. When you stretched your arm out —
I stretched mine back. We didn’t touch but could have.
In bed I rock myself into you — you want it, you tell me,
just barely, then all at once. Years ago we laid outside —
stars, warm engine of the truck. We spoke of beers
and movies, tires blown out in the rain. Sweetness,
sweet-wanting. A cross swinging from your neck.
A cold lip nicking the arc of me. I rose. That swift
moment of want, subtle borrower of my borrowed life.

* * *

Robert’s First Dream

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

— Gerard Manley Hopkins

How does one know where to begin?
The mirror asks the subject.
One night, is how all good things start,
the subject says to the mirror.
A boy walks in. He asks,
What does it mean to be glass?
to the mirror, and What does it mean
to be? to the subject
and What makes a boy, a man?
and What makes a life so unbearable? and
What makes me far from myself?
The boy asks the room
and it goes quiet after that,
like when the mind
goes blank. There is water
outside and the boy
disappears from his narrative. A stranger
on the foreshore, who can be seen
from the window, opens his mouth
to the shape of a golden yolk. He says,
in us not only errors but a love of errors. Another man
opens his mouth, he says, We can’t control
what comes back. The soul left the boy. The boy
sank into history and the soul danced
upon the horizon — singing I’m the boundless
self! I’m the boundless self! A horn from
a boat in the harbor wailed. And the mirror
spoke one last time to the subject
and the dancing soul, We were afraid
when the boy asked for an answer, the mirror says,
and now the boy doesn’t come back.

Line illustration of feet in boots standing in a puddle of water with body reflected on the surface. Illustration by Anne LeGuern.

Robert 1 & Robert 2

Robert 1 wakes up, walks downstairs.
He walks out the door to the lake
where he stands with his feet in the water.
His pants rolled up so as to not get them wet.
He makes a little gun with his hand
and blows his brains out over and over,
over the quiet blue water.
It’s impractical he thinks —
this feeling of selflessness.

Robert 2 wakes up, walks downstairs.
He walks outside and down an alley —
to a room where he strips naked
and let men take turns
drawing his junk. What a man
does for art! he says. They all laugh.
Until one makes a pass and they go
off into a back room.

Robert 1 cannot get enough
of his desire. If I’m alive
he says the day’s too heavy. Meanwhile,
Robert 2 is thinking if I’m dead
I can’t feel winter, or, worse,
what if winter is all that’s left —

If only I could turn into something
alive and untouchable — one Robert
says to the other.

* * *

Reason / Horizon

Again, my life, like a dream,
was obliterated. Who hasn’t
been here before? Cliff’s edge,

deep down, looking. I want
to be saved — it’s almost
exactly what I want.

The landscape is full
of thoughts and thunder.
It’s been this way for days.

I envy the way the world
plumps. Earth and gutter
holding water. How beautiful

I’ve thought — to hold
and never have. One day,
I threw a book across

the room. It was the end
of the world, constantly.
The self inside amidst

a perpetual shattering.
Shattering and never
shattered. I slurred

my way through months.
A green glass bowl —
empty on the coffee table,

candles burnt to stumps.
Everything is. So?
Even my voice shudders

when I speak. A little
about me: I rejoice
& I tremble. I am fearful

& wonderfully made. I
have sought for a joy
without pain. I am

unquenchable & burning.
I? Well, you know me,
truly — I can hardly
look at myself.

S. Yarberry
S. Yarberry is a trans poet and writer. Their poetry has appeared in AGNI, Tin House, Indiana Review, The Offing, Berkeley Poetry Review, jubilat, Notre Dame Review, The Boiler, miscellaneous zines, among others. Smith‘s other writings can be found in Bomb Magazine, The Adroit Journal, and Annulet: A Journal of Poetics. They currently serve as the Poetry Editor of The Spectacle as well as a small magazine called Tyger Quarterly. S. has their MFA in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis and is now a PhD candidate in literature at Northwestern University where they study twenty and twenty-first century receptions of William Blake. Their first book of poems, A Boy in the City, was published by Deep Vellum in 2022.